art
Articles about culture, art, music, literature, film, artists and related subjects.
King Mob poster and image gallery
Posters, stickers and images produced by Situationist-influenced group King Mob.
Taken from www.revoltagainstplenty.com
Ridge, Lola: anarchist and poet
A brief biography of Lola Ridge, New Zealand anarchist and poet by Mark Derby.
Her published collections of poetry included defending Tom Mooney, Sacco & Vanzetti, and recalling the death of Frank Little.
Flowers for Homestead at Dulwich Picture Gallery - Practical History
Leaflets distributed at a talk on Henry Frick's art collection, reflecting on the 1892 Homestead strike, and the origins of the wealth of the industrialists whose collections founded many of Britain's major art galleries.
As a small gesture in the field of historical memory and forgetting, flowers and a poster with the following text were placed on 21 July 2000 at the entrance to Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London, where a talk on the art collection of Henry Clay Frick had been scheduled.
William Blake takes on GlaxoSmithKline - Practical History
Report of a 2001 action at the Tate Britain Gallery in London, against a William Blake exhibition sponsored by the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.
On the final day (11 February 2001) of the William Blake exhibition at the Tate Britain Gallery in London, 30 people gathered on the steps outside to reclaim Blake from 'the dead hand of capital, empire and state' and to denounce the corporate sponsors of the Blake exhibition, GlaxoSmithKline.
Art as Form of Reality - Herbert Marcuse
Marcuse discusses the traditional conservative role of art in society, artistic challenges to traditional art forms in the 1970s - and what role art might still play in a liberated society.
"Art itself appears as part and force of the tradition which perpetuates that which is, and prevents the realization of that which can and ought to be."
Socialism and the Avant-Garde, 1880-1914 - Eric Hobsbawm
Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm's account of the relationship between the prewar artistic avant-garde and the workers' movement of that period. Both converged in the late nineteenth century, diverged quite sharply in the first phase of radical 'modernism', but found each other again - at least for a few passionate years - under the impact of the Great War and the October Revolution.
Both socialism as a mass movement and the cultural and artistic avant-garde as a widely recognized, self-conscious and sometimes separately organized representative of 'modernity' and 'progress’ within the arts are, as European phenomena, children of the last. decades of the nineteenth century. In this paper I propose to consider their relationship.
The Closed Window Onto Another Life - endangeredphoenix
Culture is the commodity that sells the whole of the commodity economy. But a critique of art and of culture is virtually absent amongst the revolutionary milieu in the UK, an absence we try to make up for here.
A prisoner who cannot see the sky from his cell window may paint on his wall a scene of birds flying amongst clouds against a blue haze of space. Outside in the wider society art plays a similar role; what is denied and seems unreachable, but possible and desirable, is represented via the window of the picture frame or TV screen.
The Dream of Fluxus, by George Macuinas
The Baltic’s recent Fluxus show can’t entirely conceal the radical ambition and potential of avant-garde art, finds Tom Jennings.
Avant-Garde Nightmare. Art review – Tom Jennings
The Dream of Fluxus, by George Macuinas, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, November 2008 – February 2009
Crimethinc and the corrupting influence of art
In this article for Freedom, first published in 2008, Jim L looks at the gulf between creations enjoyed by the masses and Art for the elites
The left has always had something of a love affair with art. From the mural paintings of the Mexican revolution, to the Bolshevik Constructivists and Left Front of the Arts, to the Situationist International.
Art - further reading guide
Libcom's guide to further reading around the subject of art, film, music and literature.
More information
General Problems of Culture
- Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture – Nelson/Grossberg, Eds.
- Recapturing Marxism – Levine/Lembcke, Eds.
Literature and Art
- The Dada Painters and Poets – Motherwell, Ed.
- The Dada Almanac – Huelsenbeck, Ed.
- The Situationist International Anthology – Knabb, Ed.
